Why Aristotle Matters to Me
Aristotle taught me that excellence is a habit, not a moment—and that ethics isn't about rules, but about becoming a certain kind of person.
I came to Aristotle relatively late, after years of reading modern self-help and productivity literature. What struck me immediately was how contemporary his thinking felt. While Plato dealt in ideals and transcendent forms, Aristotle focused on the world we actually inhabit—messy, material, practical. He asked: how do we live well given human nature as it actually is, not as we wish it to be?
What draws me to Aristotle is his insistence that virtue is cultivated through practice, not theory. You don't become courageous by understanding courage philosophically; you become courageous by repeatedly acting courageously until it becomes second nature. This applies to everything: you become disciplined by practicing discipline, generous by practicing generosity, wise by practicing wisdom. Character is accumulated small actions.
Aristotle also understood balance in a way modern extremists (in any direction) often miss. His concept of the "golden mean"—virtue as the middle point between deficiency and excess—feels especially relevant in our polarized age. Courage isn't recklessness or cowardice; it's the balanced response appropriate to the situation. This nuanced thinking guides my approach to business, relationships, and life.
About Aristotle
Born in 384 BCE in northern Greece, Aristotle studied under Plato at the Academy in Athens for twenty years. After Plato's death, he tutored Alexander the Great, then returned to Athens to found his own school, the Lyceum. There he developed systematic approaches to logic, physics, biology, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics—essentially creating the framework for Western intellectual inquiry.
His major ethical works include the Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics, which explore how humans achieve eudaimonia (flourishing or the good life). Unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle grounded philosophy in empirical observation and practical application. His influence on medieval Islamic and Christian thought, and later on Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophy, cannot be overstated. He died in 322 BCE, but his systematic approach to understanding reality shaped human thought for over two millennia.
This perfectly illustrates Aristotle's approach: virtue isn't suppressing emotion, but expressing it appropriately. Anger itself isn't wrong; misplaced, excessive, or prolonged anger is. This requires sophisticated judgment—knowing who deserves anger, how much, when, and for how long. Aristotle's ethics demands more than following rules; it demands wisdom about context and proportion.